Nalco's 25% share buyback to take place in FY17

Aluminium maker Nalco's estimated Rs 3,250 crore share buyback programme has been delayed due to procedural issues and the same will be completed in FY2016-17.
In January this year, the Mines Ministry had said that the Finance Ministry asked it to allow Nalco to buyback 25 per cent of government's stake in the Navratna company in a bid to tap PSUs' funds to make up for shortfall in disinvestment proceeds.
"There are certain procedures that need to be followed, which is taking time. The buyback will not happen in this month," Mines Secretary Balvinder Kumar told PTI.
Sources had said that government may raise about Rs 3,250 crore by selling 25 per cent of its shares to Nalco.

Earlier, the government was hoping to sell 10 per cent stake in Nalco to raise about Rs 1,300 crore but volatile markets have derailed its plans.
Faced with fiscal crunch due to lower disinvestment proceeds, the government is looking at other options like more dividend and bonus share issues from the PSUs this fiscal.

Recently, the government had asked asked central public sector enterprises to pay 30 per cent dividend and cash-rich PSUs like Coal India to issue bonus shares.
For the current fiscal ending this month, the government has been able to meet less than half the budget estimates at Rs 25,312 crore as against the target of Rs 69,500 crore.

The government aims to collect Rs 56,500 crore through disinvestment in PSUs in the next fiscal, 2016-17.